Foro Estrategias de la Sociedad Civil para el Ejercicio al Derecho a la Alimentación: San Cristóbal de la Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, 25 y 26 de noviembre, 2009
Get on the Green Bus: EcoJustice in East Oakland, California, USA, November 19, 2009
Native Peoples Native Homelands Climate Change Workshop II: Prior Lakes, Minnesota, USA, November 18-21, 2009
…
Dutch independent filmmakers Mascha and Manfred Poppenk made a documentary on teen moms becoming urban farmers in Detroit. Check out the trailer or go to the website.
November Reader Survey: Which projects, places or reports should everyone know about Oakland, California?
1.) People’s Grocery is a community-based organization in West Oakland that develops creative solutions to the health problems in (the) community that stem from a lack of access to and knowledge about healthy, fresh foods. Visit their site here.
2.) City Slicker’s Farms are growing affordable fresh produce for West Oakland. Look up one of their farms here.
3.) Planting Justice is based in Oakland and dedicated to food justice, economic justice, and sustainable local food systems. Visit them here.
4.) Oakland Based Urban Gardens is a West Oakland organization with youth gardening programs. Visit them here.
5.) The Oakland Food Connection is a not-for-profit organization focused on Oakland’s heritage of Food, Community and Culture. Visit them here.
6.) Oakland Food Policy Council is promoting an Equitable and Sustainable Oakland Food System, visit them here.
7.) Cultivating the Commons: An Assessment of the Potential for Urban Agriculture on Oakland’s Public Land, a new report that reveals untapped potential for food production on Oakland’s Public Land. A new report released this week identifies 1,200 acres of vacant and underutilized public land in Oakland, California, that could potentially be used for food production. If only half of this land were cultivated using intensive ecological farming methods, the authors conclude that these “commons” could contribute at least five percent of the city’s recommended vegetable needs to the local food system, a significant step towards Oakland’s goal sourcing a third of its food locally.
The report also emphasizes urban agriculture’s potential contributions to Oakland’s sustainability goals. In addition to producing fresh and nutritious food, urban farming creates green jobs, and provides and other environmental services, green space, and educational opportunities. Read the report here.
8.) Repairing the Local Food System: Long-Range Planning for People’s Grocery, an award-winning Master’s Thesis by Alethea Marie Harper (2007), from Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, at University of California, Berkeley. Download the PDF here.
9.) History of Food Insecurity in West Oakland can be read here.
10.) Poverty and Race Research Council Report: Food Justice Activism in West Oakland, California (Jan/Feb 2008), read it here.
11.) Oakland Food System Assessment was study was conducted by graduate students at the University of California at Berkeley in 2005. Gain access to their research here.
USA: Halloween is the celebration for fall harvest, ghouls, seductive gypsy vampire dancing…? Lest not forget the Csárdás, a gypsy orchestra classic written by Italian-born composer Vittorio Monti around 1904, and seen here in a hot vampire hungrian folk dancing scene (from the spoof “Dracula: Dead and Loving It,” Mel Brooks directed., 1995, and seen in this video clip from 1: 22 to 2:38)
An op-ed in today’s NYTimes, “The Carnivore’s Dilemma:” NICOLETTE HAHN NIMAN argues that the farming practices that score the environmental weight of eating meat are not all the same. Read the full piece here.
2nd Annual Gathering, Growing Food and Justice for All Initiative: October 30 – November 1, 2009
South Central Farmers Día de los Muertos: Los Angeles, California, USA, November 1, 2009
On the subway and without a wasted word, VERLYN KLINKENBORG has it all right.
Oakland, USA: Footage of interview shot by Global Oneness Project of People’s Grocery Co-founder and Executive Director Brahm Ahmadi speaking on efforts to transform our modern food system.
People’s Grocery wins the 2009 Green Alternative Honoree at MyHumanRightsHeroes.org.
An ache turning twinge and sudden emptiness forming
a hot heart burning, and releases scorched earth policy
in ways of words said aloud or words quiet, just thought
that
a life is suffering and churlish and yet somehow
we find ways to keep living.
…
And even though the mess spells certain disaster,
hidden springs a secret joy from finding the smallest detail;
the smell of healthy soil,
the fruit of working honeybees,
reaching the sound of laughter,
here finally reminded that
leaves and branches of a large tree dance together as one body,
played to the beat of autumn wind.
…
San Francisco’s mandatory city-wide composting program becomes official city ordinance today.
From Monday’s San Francisco Chronicle:
The law, the most comprehensive in the country, is an aggressive push by Mayor Gavin Newsom to cut greenhouse gas emissions, return carbon to the soil, and have the city sending nothing to landfills or incinerators by 2020.
Reported today on ABC 7:
“(Composting is) helping us keep things out of landfills and it’s also return nutrients to the soil and help prevent global warming,” San Francisco Department of the Environment spokesperson Jean Walsh said.
Earlier today from NPR’s Morning Edition:
After picking up curbside food scraps, garbage trucks head to the south of the city to the Organics Annex, the heart of the citywide food waste operation.
Jared Blumenfeld, the city’s environmental officer, says the Organic Annex is already processing about half of the city’s food waste, which is more than 500 tons per day.
“You can see a lot of lettuce, tomatoes, old apples, rotten cabbages,” Blumenfeld says. “You get a kind of vivid picture here of what’s being thrown away.”
San Francisco turns all of that food refuse into compost, which is then sold to Bay Area farms and vineyards. The program is the latest effort in one of the most aggressive recycling campaigns in the nation. San Francisco currently keeps 72 percent of its garbage stream out of the landfill by recycling cans, bottles, construction material and cooking oil. Blumenfeld says that even though the program officially launches Wednesday, he’s not surprised by how many people are already fully participating.
From today’s TVNZ:
Thousands of farmers staged protests across France and blocked traffic for about two hours on a section of the Champs Elysees avenue in Paris to demand the government help them combat a plunge in food prices.
France’s main farmers’ union, FNSEA, estimated about 50,000 farmers with 7,000 tractors turned out around the country.
Depressed prices in the dairy sector have sparked protests across Europe this year, including a delivery boycott last month.
